Shauna Thomas lives in Bloomsburg. She's 38, has two sons, and runs a catering business. She knows many people have no idea about her past struggles with drug addiction, starting when she was 19.

"I was just with friends one day and they're like, 'Try this,' and I did, and I liked it. (It was) heroin," Thomas recalled.

What followed was years of rehabs and relapses. At one point, her family threatened to turn her over to the police.

Then, at 24, Shauna got pregnant.

"Making self-destructive decisions for myself was one thing, but to put that on someone else? I couldn't do that."

That baby was born full-term and perfectly healthy.

Shauna says what finally worked for her was medication-assisted treatment, something she had to drive to Harrisburg to find back then.

Now, there are clinics all over, including one at Geisinger South Wilkes-Barre.

"This is not a place where folks are coming for primary care. It's not a place they come for psychiatric care. It's solely for addiction care," said Dr. Margaret Jarvis, chief of addiction medicine for Geisinger.

Dr. Jarvis points out they are primarily seeing opioid addiction issues, though they treat all kinds of addiction.

"Part of what we know about the disease of addiction is that other diseases travel with it. And so, we want to make sure we screen for those diseases as well."

Director of operations Jordan Barbour explains the system opened its first medication-assisted treatment clinic in Bloomsburg 18 months ago, the one in Wilkes-Barre a year ago, and a third over the summer in Williamsport. A fourth is now being planned for somewhere in the northeast.

"There's some preliminary numbers from the CDC that the overdose mortality rate is dropping nationally, and the overwhelming public health response has been great, but we're nowhere near the finish line," Barbour said.

Shauna, who was not treated at Geisinger, used medical therapy for more than 10 years. She knows medication therapy for addiction has risks, isn't always effective, and often has its share of detractors.

"I hear it, too. I know that the stigma is out there."

But she says she's now clean and reluctantly putting her face to a problem that she says shouldn't be hidden anymore.

"I put my story out there in hopes that someone can see me and say, 'I can do that, too,'" she said.

As for Geisinger's MAT Clinic, officials say they've treated 1,200 patients system-wide so far, many of whom are still being treated.

3 comments

burtfan16

I was taking 300 Oxys a month for 3 years. I wanted to quit but didn’t want to go through the pain of detox. I wasn’t offered suboxone or methadone, just Librium because I had an alcohol addiction as well. I came out of detox stayed off alcohol but went right back to oxy. Then a friend of mine mentioned Kratom. Now I was using oxys for another year out of rehab so I was definitely addicted again. I started taking kratom with a bottle of pills on standby. It was like a miracle, I completely lost my craving. Apparently the main chemicals in kratom attach to the same opioid receptors that oxy and heroin attach to. A large part of addiction is the nueroscience of what your taking.

mijuolbe

Medication used for years. I work with someone on suboxen and when she doesn’t have it or get it on time she is literally insane. She melts these pills in her mouth at least 3 times a day in the 8 hours I work with her. Just a new addiction. Fine to use for a few months. Alcoholics just quit and do meetings. Its all mind over matter. I am an alcoholic 6 years sober